Island

by Richard Laymon

  Billie’s close-cropped hair, dripping with sweat, clung to her head in dark ringlets. Her back, richly dark from the sun (sunblock only goes so far), gleamed as if she’d been dipped in melted butter. Her back was crossed by the single rope of her tomahawk sling, and by the three coils of the long rope. The tomahawk bounced and swayed against her right hip as she walked. The seat of her black bikini pants was packed with her full, firm buttocks. I remember thinking, as I followed her, how I would’ve loved to see her wearing a thong like Connie’s.

  As for Connie, her short, blond hair looked almost exactly like her mother’s. But that’s where the resemblances stopped. She didn’t have the broad shoulders, the wide back, or the impressive hips and rump. From behind, she looked like skin and bones while her mother looked like flesh and blood.

  She wore the towel-vest, which covered most of her back. Below the rear of the vest, she was naked except for a waistband and a strip of orange fabric that descended (and very nearly vanished) between her buttocks. Her cheeks were brown and shiny, but had a few red bumps from the mosquitoes.

  Both women were wonderful to watch.

  For about an hour, I worked my way along behind them, struggling with the weight of the ax, keeping an eye out for trouble, and for Kimberly, and savoring my views of Billie and Connie.

  I’m glad that I didn’t try to be a perfect gentleman and avoid looking at them; pretty soon they would be gone and I might never have another chance to see them.

  I didn’t know that at the time.

  I only knew that we were together on a mission, that I could admire them from behind to my heart’s content, that I loved them both, and that this was one of those few, special times I would always look back on with fondness and sorrow.

  The great times are often that way.

  In the middle of everything, you suddenly realize that you’re having a perfect, golden experience. And you realize how few they are. And how this one is bound to end too soon. You know that it will always be a wonderful memory, that the loss of it will give you a soft ache in the heart.

  This was one of those times.

  It had begun, I realize now, with ‘Waltzing Matilda.’

  It ended upstream, in the rocks beyond the lagoon, at the edge of the chasm.

  By the time we reached the other side of the lagoon, we were drenched with sweat and gasping for breath. Instead of pausing to rest, however, we climbed the rocks alongside the waterfall.

  We no sooner reached the top than Kimberly shouted, ‘Over here!’

  We spotted her standing on a boulder by the side of the stream, waving her arms back and forth. She was uphill from us, about a hundred feet away. Her spear leaned against the boulder, close enough for her to crouch and grab in case of an emergency. But if she fell on it...

  The idea made me grimace.

  While we approached her, she climbed down.

  Didn’t fall and get skewered.

  Scooted on her rump down the face of the rock, then jumped to the ground.

  ‘Was that you guys singing?’ she asked.

  ‘Who else would it be?’ Connie said.

  She smiled. ‘I couldn’t believe my ears. You’re coming to my rescue belting out songs?’

  ‘You obviously didn’t require rescuing,’ Billie said.

  ‘It’s the thought that counts.’

  ‘We would’ve sung “The Gary Owen,” I told her, ’but I don’t know the words.‘

  ‘The Gary what?’ Connie asked.

  Kimberly wrinkled her nose. ‘Is that the Seventh Cavalry song?’ she asked.

  ‘Right.’ I hummed a few bars.

  Billie grinned. She said, ‘Ah, John Wayne.’

  ‘George Armstrong Custer,’ I said.

  ‘That would’ve been choice,’ Kimberly said.

  ‘You being part Sioux, and all ...’

  ‘Anyway, I’m glad you came.’

  ‘We thought you might be able to use some help,’ Billie told her. ‘Even if you didn’t want us getting in your way.’

  ‘Hey, I’m sorry about that. I got a little carried away down there. Anyway, as it turns out, you don’t have to worry about me going nuts and torturing the hell out of Wesley. The bastard’s dead.’

  ‘Whoa!’ Connie said. (I think she meant it to mean, ‘Wow!’)

  ‘You found him?’ I asked.

  She nodded. ‘Let’s go. I’ll show you.’ She started leading us through the strange terrain to the right of the stream.

  ‘What about Thelma?’ Billie asked.

  ‘No sign of her. But at least we don’t have to worry about Wesley anymore.’

  We followed Kimberly on a zigzag route through a maze of boulders, bushes, trees, and rock piles that jutted up like miniature mountains. Though we walked through patches of shadows, there was more sunlight than we’d seen since the beach. A gentle breeze blew. It cooled my sweat, and kept the mosquitoes away.

  ‘He’s through here?’ Connie asked. ‘How did you ever find him?’

  ‘Took a while. This is upstream from the falls, like Thelma said.’

  ‘But conveniently close to the falls and lagoon,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yep. To me, it seemed like just exactly the right sort of area. You could hide an army through here. So I scouted around for a while. I climbed that.’ She pointed at a tall cluster of rocks, not far ahead of us.

  ‘You must’ve been here a while,’ Billie said.

  ‘I hurried. I was pretty sure you guys would come after me, sooner or later, and I wanted a chance to find Wesley before you got here. Thought I’d find him alive.’

  ‘That’s what we were afraid of,’ Connie told her. ‘That’s how come we tried to hurry.’

  ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘We had to go around the lagoon,’ I explained. ‘We couldn’t swim across because of the ax.’

  ‘I’m glad you showed up when you did.’ She smiled. ‘Better late than never.’ She seemed quite cheerful. ‘Anyway, I was up there when I spotted something that looked like a pair of red panties on the ground. I figured they must be Thelma’s. So what I did, I climbed down and went over to check them out. They were right by the edge of a chasm. I sort of peered over the edge, and there he was, down at the bottom. I could hardly believe my eyes. It was Wesley, all right.’

  ‘And he’s definitely dead?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d say so. You’ll see.’

  ‘So,’ Connie said, ‘now we only have to worry about Thelma.’ She glanced nervously at several nearby places where the gal might be lurking.

  Billie said, ‘Don’t worry. She isn’t likely to jump all four of us.’

  ‘I can’t figure her out,’ Kimberly said. ‘Looks like she told us the truth, after all, about killing Wesley. His head’s bashed in, just like she said. So how come she went for Rupert with the razor? I mean, we figured Wesley must’ve sent her. That idea doesn’t quite work anymore.’

  ‘She must’ve had some other reason,’ Billie suggested.

  ‘You try putting moves on her?’ Connie asked me.

  I blushed and blurted, ‘No!’

  Connie smirked. ‘Not your type?’

  ‘Not even close.’

  ‘She must’ve had some kind of reason,’ Billie said, frowning slightly as if puzzled.

  Kimberly smiled. ‘We’ll just have to ask her when she shows up.’

  ‘I’m hoping she doesn’t, I said. ‘If I never see her again in my whole life, it won’t be too soon.’

  ‘She’ll show up.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ve got her favorite razor.’ As Kimberly said that, she gave me a look and a smile that not only let me know she was kidding around, but somehow made me feel as if everything would turn out fine and dandy.

  God, how I would love to see that look again, that smile.

  Nevermore.

  I shouldn’t say that. I shouldn’t give up hope. Not till I’ve seen her dead body with my own eyes. And even that
might not make anything certain.

  Plenty around here is not what it seems to be.

  I’ve started drifting again. Procrastinating. The problem is, I just don’t want to tell about what’s coming. I’ve got to, though.

  The Last Stand

  We arrived at the chasm.

  Maybe ‘chasm’ isn’t the best word to describe it - this wasn’t the Grand Canyon. It was actually a long, narrow space between a couple of neighboring rock formations. I would guess it was thirty feet long, and about six or eight feet from edge to edge at the place where we were approaching it. At one end, the gap narrowed down to nothing. At the other end, it stopped at the open air of a drop-off.

  Striding toward the gap, Kimberly tossed her spear to the ground and rid herself of the tomahawk. She didn’t halt, though, until she reached the very edge. There, she bent over as if taking a bow, and planted her hands on her knees.

  The rest of us held back.

  ‘He’s down there?’ Connie asked.

  ‘Yep. Come and take a look.’

  ‘I’d just as soon not, if it’s all the same.’

  Kimberly straightened up. Swiveling at the hips, she looked back at us. ‘Doesn’t anyone want to see him?’

  I raised my hand.

  ‘Well, come on over here.’

  ‘I’ll hold the ax for you,’ Billie told me, so I gave it to her.

  Then I forced myself to step forward. The last thing I really wanted was to look at another dead guy. God knows, two were more than enough. But I needed to see for myself that Wesley was down there, and that he wasn’t alive.

  I couldn’t force myself to walk all the way to the edge, as Kimberly had done. When I got close to it, I went down on all fours. I crawled the rest of the way.

  The chasm wasn’t nearly as deep as I’d feared.

  Deep enough, though. Fifteen or twenty feet, probably, with very steep walls on both sides. The bottom looked like a flat but slightly tilted slab of rock. A few bushes sprouted here and there out of crevices in the walls and floor.

  The whole time I was busy inspecting the dimensions and general appearance of the chasm, I was trying not to see the body.

  It was just to the left down there.

  I kept seeing it in my peripheral vision while I studied everything except the body.

  I finally had to look, though.

  He was sprawled face down. At first glance, he might’ve been a guy who’d drifted off to sleep while doing a bit of nude sunbathing. But his skin was a bad color. And he had a hole in his ass where there shouldn’t be one - in the middle of his right buttock. And the back of his head was a ruin of mashed, black mush. Also, his left leg showed a lot of bone from the knee down; some sort of animal must’ve been working on it - an animal a lot larger than the ones I saw crawling on him and buzzing over him.

  ‘You don’t get much deader than that,’ Kimberly said. She was by my side, bent over, her hair hanging down so I couldn’t see her face. It’s just as well that her face was out of sight. It must’ve worn a look of delight. Because that’s what I heard in her voice. ‘There’s a fine example of what we call “dead meat,”’ she said.

  ‘Guess so,’ I muttered, unable to work up much enthusiasm.

  When she stepped back, I crawled away from the edge and stood up.

  ‘Nobody else interested?’ she asked, and took off Keith’s shirt as she walked over to where she’d left her tomahawk and spear.

  ‘I can live without seeing him,’ Billie said.

  ‘Let me have your rope,’ Kimberly said.

  Billie frowned. ‘What for?’

  ‘I’m going down.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ I muttered. ‘You don’t want to do that.’

  ‘Sure I do.’ Kimberly had never seemed so perky. It was scary. ‘Have to make sure it’s him.’

  ‘Of course it’s him. Who else could it be?’

  ‘Gilligan?’ she suggested. ‘The professor? D.B. Cooper? Who knows? Could be almost anyone.’

  ‘It’s Wesley,’ I said.

  Connie scowled at her. ‘You told us it’s Wesley.’

  ‘I’m sure it is him. I’m just not sure sure. That’s why I need to go down and turn him over.’

  Turn him over?

  ‘Oh jeez,’ I said. ‘Don’t. You don’t want to touch him.’

  She gave me a strange smile and said, ‘Sure I do.’

  ‘Be my guest,’ Billie said. Nose wrinkled, she lifted the coils of rope off her shoulder and swung them over her head. She held them out to Kimberly, who took them.

  ‘There’s really no reason to go down there,’ I protested. ‘Really. I mean, you know and I know that it’s Wesley, so...’

  ‘Maybe you know, bucko.’

  ‘You know, too.’

  ‘I know no such thing.’

  ‘It’s not funny!’

  ‘Am I being funny?’

  ‘You’re being strange.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Connie said.

  ‘How about we just call it quits and go back to the beach,’ Billie suggested.

  The quirky grin vanished from Kimberly’s face. ‘I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do. What I’m gonna do is go down and pay a visit to our dead friend because if he’s not Wesley I wanta know it and if he is Wesley...’ She shrugged.

  ‘What?’ Billie asked.

  ‘Nothing. I just have to know for sure it’s him. That’s all. You know what? I’m not so sure, anymore. The more I think about it, the more this guy doesn’t look big enough to be Wesley.’

  ‘That’s a crock,’ I said.

  Without another word, Billie walked to the edge and peered down. Then she made a sound. ‘Uhhh.’ After about a minute, she turned around and came back to us. She looked ill. ‘It’s gotta be Wesley,’ she muttered. ‘Who else could it be? Anyway, I think people are supposed to look smaller when they’re dead.’

  ‘You think he looks smaller?’ Connie blurted.

  ‘Well... sort of. Wesley was a pretty big guy...’

  ‘The dead guy’s big,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I’m not sure he’s as big.’

  Connie muttered, ‘Jesus.’

  ‘He’s got Kimberly’s spear hole in his ass,’ I said. ‘And his head’s caved in, just the way Thelma ...’

  ‘Making him conveniently difficult to identify,’ Kimberly said. ‘And anybody could’ve poked a hole in someone’s butt.’

  ‘In whose butt?’ I blurted. ‘Who else is there?’

  Kimberly’s smile returned. Not her spectacular smile—her bizarre and gleeful one. ‘Remains to be seen, Watson.’

  With that, she twirled around and made her spritely way to the edge of the chasm. Holding one end of the rope, she let the rest of it fall over the edge. Then she faced us and shook her head. ‘Not long enough. We’ll have to add on the tomahawk ropes.’

  By that time, we were all ready to cooperate. We hadn’t had much faith in Kimberly’s judgment, but Billie’s doubts had turned the trick. She wasn’t one hundred per cent sure the body belonged to Wesley, so we really needed to make an absolutely positive ID.

  While I stood guard with the ax, the women took apart their tomahawk slings.

  Billie tied the knots. The three shorter pieces added at least twelve feet to the length of the rope.

  Kimberly held one end and tossed the rest of it over the edge. ‘Reaches,’ she announced.

  I looked around for a good place to tie off the upper end. A tree trunk, for instance. Or a solid jut of rock. There was nothing of the sort near enough to the edge. ‘I guess we’ll have to lower you,’ I said.

  ‘Nope. I’ll just climb down.’

  Apparently, she’d already figured out what to do. She took the ax from me, carried it toward the edge, and turned the ax so its haft pointed away from the chasm. Then she squatted and shoved the blade into a crack in the rocks. Standing up, she stomped it deeper.

  She tied a loop at her end of the rope and slipped it down the haft until it stopped aga
inst the steel head.

  ‘That should do it,’ she said. ‘Rupe, how about hanging on to the ax handle? Just keep it pushed down, and try not to let the head pop out of the crack.’

  I nodded. ‘Okay, but...’

  ‘Or stand on the ax. Whatever.’

  ‘Okay.’ Crouching, I clutched the wooden handle just below the loop of rope. ‘Got it,’ I said.

  ‘Good guy,’ she said. She gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze, then moved around in front of me. Briefly, we were forehead to forehead. Then she crawled backward, the rope on the ground between her knees.

  ‘Be careful,’ Billie said.

  ‘For Godsake, don’t fall,’ Connie said.

  They both moved in closer. Billie stood near my left side, while Connie sank down to one knee on my right. They were ready to help if anything should go wrong.

  So far, Kimberly hadn’t even taken hold of the rope. Hands pressed against the edge of the chasm, she lowered her legs. Then she stopped. She held herself there, braced up with stiff arms in front of me, the ledge pushing a long dent across both her thighs. Her shoulders and arms, usually so slender and smooth, bulged with curves of muscle. So did her breasts. They swelled, smooth and round, ballooning the pouches of her white bikini. Her dark skin dripped sweat and glistened.

  ‘Rupe,’ she said.

  I met her eyes.

  ‘I’m gonna lose my knife.’

  I looked at it.

  I’d been trying to avoid looking there.

  As usual, the Swiss Army knife was tucked in between her bare skin and waistband at the very front of her bikini pants. Its top end stuck up more than usual—about half an inch. The thickness of the handle held the pants away from her body, and made a bulge all the way down.

  I saw her problem right away; if she tried to lower herself any further, the rock ledge would push at the bottom end of the knife, thrusting it up and out.

  ‘Take it,’ she said.

  ‘Uh...’

  She sort of rolled her eyes upward. ‘Just do it. Please.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ Connie said, sounding annoyed. Up on one knee, though, she was too far away. She started to put her other knee down.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. Leaning over the ax, I planted my left hand on the ground to hold myself steady while I reached for the knife with my right hand.